One of the acts of kindness we received during the recent power outage came from my friend Perry, who called up offering to bring his electric car over to run our refrigerator for awhile. Needless to say, we took him up on the offer.
He brought his own extension cord that put ours to shame. He explained that a thicker wire offers less resistance to the electricity as it heads from his car to our frig.
His electric car can serve as an electrical supply for home appliances only because he bought and installed an adaptor of some sort. Perry's also used it at Veblen House to run a vacuum. Power tools like a circular saw, however, cannot be run on this system because they use too much energy when they are starting up. Many machines use much more energy when they are starting up than when they are running.
Perry retrieved his car a few hours later, by which time our refrigerator was good for the night. The next morning, energy was restored, and we were back to suckling from the mother grid.
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